


The Echoes Between

by Aerithari



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Family, Romance, Spoilers, Tragic Romance, relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 23:00:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6303526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aerithari/pseuds/Aerithari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Azura's eyes is a mirror of the lives Kamui could have led. Nohr or Hoshido, dawn or dusk, Xander...<br/>Will a willingness for peace ever be enough?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Echoes Between

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILERS FOR THE EVENTS OF BIRTHRIGHT AND CONQUEST WITHIN...read on if you dare
> 
> thanks to the Oh Hellos as always for having awesome music to write to, thankfully i did not call this one 'before the dawn'  
> inspired after playing the two paths and starting the third and being like...you know what...things.  
> Azura feels. Xander feels!! Just feels.  
> so here ya go

First, the memory. No matter her choices, it always begins here:

For a brief moment, the loneliness vanishes. She hears the precise zing of his sword through the night breeze. He had left her room, as commanded by her father, the high king, but Xander lingers, an echo in the air. She takes in a sharp breath, as if she could keep it close.

You must train harder.

You will be free.

I will it.

She stands and listens to the air move. She copies him and chants the same thought.

_I will it._

_I will it._

_…I need you._

Until the thought circles round to his leaving, and she can’t breathe.

\--

In one life, she feels hope. 

It’s awkward and stumbling as a new foal, but the hope seizes her in the small moments, like when Elise, effervescent with the presence of a new audience, smiles briefly at the flustered Sakura before shouting at her that Kamui was HER sister, not Sakura’s. Or when Camilla off-handedly tells Hinoka she has a fair face in the same breath that she tells Hinoka that Kamui will never go with them again, not ever. Or when Xander glares at Ryoma, but then glances worriedly at her, the woman sitting purposefully at his left, as if sensing the tumultuous feelings that had silenced her since Izuma’s bizarre dinner began.

She wants to shake them all silent and laugh raucously until she stops breathing. Doesn't she get a say in their love? (She supposed she did, at one singular point, when she made the decision to stay with the family she’d been raised with). The thought turns sour. She wants to will them all to work together, but their pride will never allow it.

Azura smiles from somewhere across the table, eyes bright but knowingly sad. She shakes her head once, subtly.

Xander gently grabs her hand under the table. She squeezes his fingers and forces herself to smile. She wants to commit this moment to memory.

Everyone she loved, sitting at one table, alive – if not well and laughing, but at least wonderfully, gloriously _alive_.

\--

In another life, she feels wonder. 

How much Elise had known and learned and had hidden from her, while Kamui was trapped in an obsidian tower! Of course Elise would find the true heart of Nohr – the young woman was drawn to life just as life was drawn to her. It’s joy and brightness and love, hiding underground, banishing darkness from its usual hiding space. 

And she was here, with them – with her Hoshidan family, guiding them yet to try and end this horrible war. Elise would always side with the righteous, and for all her youthful pride, was somehow both humble and brave enough to know when those she loved most were risking themselves in the name of something evil.

And Camilla! The woman, elegant and masterful with her many masks, seems to relax at Kamui’s side, now that she can be herself – a woman who loves deeply, and wants nothing more than to cherish those who are in her care. Xander would yet be convinced, like Leo – like dear Leo, who acted cold to save face, who protected Kamui even now. Hope burns like a breathing inferno for a sudden, sweet moment. But she looks back at Azura, and feels her body turn to ash.

Azura hangs back, silent and alone.

Uncertain. Fading.

\--

Azura touches her arm and shakes her head. “It will be all right.”

“But how would we know if it was wrong?” Kamui wants to ask. How would we know, before it is too late? How many times do I have to make you suffer?

When she sides with Nohr, she watches so many innocents die – dead, because of the mask she must wear in order to seek peace. She thinks of Elise and Leo and Camilla…she thinks of Xander and puts a fluttering hand to her chest for a moment …and wonders when love is allowed to outweigh the rest.

How many lives are too many before you’ve done the unforgivable?

“You bear the sword that is meant to bring peace. That means your chosen path is the right one.”

But the maiden knew more, Kamui could see now. In her old amber eyes is a mirror of the lives she could have lead, with her song as the fulcrum on which all things balanced.

\--

She sees Xander, and she knows in another life he is standing beside her, warriors in arms, hand-in-hand, hearts as one. _Little princess_ , he would say, _you are the most precious person in the world to me._

She thinks of Silas – in this life, they found each other, he who gave up his homeland for a chance to see her smile, but she feels, instantly, that maybe they never had to lose it all. Her chest hollows out.

Visions brush the back of her eyelids as she blinks away tears. Simple vows: “You’ll never have to think of it, what you’d ever do without me.” Quiet moments, stashed away in the sheets of her quarters, in the boughs of trees seeing sunlight for the first time in decades, in the old stone of distant kingdoms. Elise, alive. 

Alive alive alive alive alive

The moments flicker like votive light, bright as a pinpoint, fleeting. Her heart can’t bear anymore loss. Why does it tease her with what she will never have?

But she still lifts her blade. It’s the only way to end this, she thinks, and if I have to die for there to be peace, so be it. Let me lose it all. Let me show Garon what it means to give of yourself and expect nothing in return. Let me die in memory of the best of us.

She doesn’t see Xander move into her strike until it is too late.

She screams “Wait!” perhaps, or maybe it was “No!” or “Stop!” Moments fall apart in the span between her half-hearted sword strike and the way he falls into her arms. Her worst fears bloom to life like a night’s orchid. She's a child again, watching him leave, watching as he closes the door and does not look back. He knows she is strong enough to survive through the night, through the next day, for the next week without him, maybe the rest of her days if need be – he always had that faith. She did not. And now she had no time to tell him so.

“Maybe in another life,” he sputters through blood, whispery and fading, like he can see them now too. He reaches up a palm to touch her face, the armor luke-warm and slick against her skin. She seizes his hand, as if she can will him to stay. In another life.

Echoes that fade too fast.

She cries until time becomes immaterial. She can’t remember how much time passed before Hinoka and Sakura pull her away from his body, or when Silas takes the weapon from her hand, or which exact moment he holds her to his chest, when he whispers through her keening fog:

“He died for peace.”

_No.  
He died for me._

\--

The sun sets on the throne of dusk. 

“You will be my guiding light,” her husband says to her softly, as if he ever needed one. He kisses her brow, holds her close, lets out a shaky breath against her skin. Xander was always meant to be king, just as peace would always one day replace war, but he seems so careful now, as if he knows what he could have lost. She knows it well. She takes his hand and feels a spark of pain so jarring she stops breathing.

She thinks of Takumi and Ryoma – half of Hoshido’s heart. “We could have been a family,” they’d said to her, in that world between…if it had ever really happened.

But the pain is deeper, more.

A guilt that lingers. Like an echo, across her soul.

\--

The sun rises on the throne of dawn. Light dances, pink and gold, between the cherry blossoms.

The air is chilled in the blue of morning, and all is still and soft and bright. In moments, Jakob or Sakura will come and retrieve her. The peace caravan toward Nohr will soon leave, and she will be part of it, as is her place. But right now, it is her alone within the sanctuary, nestled within the old Hoshidan castle.

Maybe the promise of morning can one day be enough.

She wonders when.

\--

A third life, and the clarity is instant.

She sees death on both sides. Innocents and warriors, those she loves most, those she missed too much to ever know. She turns away from it all.

Azura chases after her, light-footed but desperate.

“You must choose one,” the maiden says, as if relaying a tired truth. But Kamui shakes her head and refuses. If they both turn against her, fine – it would be better than either side thinking she favored one over the other.

But then Azura smiles, so soft and subtle Kamui almost misses it. Despite her words, she looks relieved. 

Kamui swallows the horror that yawns awake inside her. Exhaustion lines Azura’s young face so deeply that Kamui almost recoils. The young woman seemed as fragile and necessary as an old candle on a temple’s altar – even small fires light the way for those who need a path. Or burn the fingers of those who touch them. 

She ignores Xander’s broken shouts of treason and stores them in her heart. _I’ll never raise my sword against you._ She ignores Ryoma’s tired pleas, his call that she has been lost. She is not lost. She understands, all at once, what is at stake. Herself.

No one. Not again.

An echo comes – all her loves and deaths and failures and coronations – and then it fades. She lifts the divine Yato to her eyes, as if to capture it again, but the fleeting sense is gone. All that’s left is the old chant that passed between her and her prince down below.

_I will it._

She jumps into the endless dark. No longer a leaving, but a homecoming. And she would lead him there.

**Author's Note:**

> and then kamui marries xander, sinning all over town, and everything is gr8
> 
> i had silas as the Hoshido path marriage because thats what I did, but many in the land of the itnernet have sold me on Takumi x Kamui too....so fill in with whichever you like. :D
> 
> And for those who may be confused: I tried alternating between the timelines with each section until the end which is ~revelations~...idk if I made this obvious enough. but i tend to prefer having readers flounder on their own. apparently. haha


End file.
